Patient Gamers

Metro Exodus EE

Child of light Had it on my radar for some years, then in my Steam library for many more. Finally played it. Really nice vibe and combat system with amazing art direction and narrative.

Theme Hospital

Doom Eternal, Team Fortress 2

It's early access so I don't think it counts, but I played the demo some time ago: Gloomwood

Volcanoids is a fantastic co-op game that I keep going back to. Also just started playing Hardspace: Shipbreaker, interesting so far.

Red Dead Redemption 2. I got like 200 hours out of it already and still not done.

Probably Omori, although I haven't gotten to two of four endings just yet. Its vibes naturally resonated with me over time, even at its darkest moments.

Probably Nier: Replicant, though I have some I'm just starting that could possibly beat it:

• CrossCode
• Alan Wake
• Red Dead Redemption II

Honorable mentions to (all great):

• Manifold Garden
• Human Resource Machine
• Ori and the Blind Forest

Bloodborne, Sifu or Hyper Light Drifter.

I don't really want to pick between the three, but I'll go with Sifu, because it's got a little of that super tough, Fromsoftiness built in.

Runs like a dream on my Steamdeck too, and has some genuinely really impressive moments of beauty that I wasn't expecting from a super-hard-beat-people-up-with-a-pipe game.

FF7 Remake and Celeste are my favorites so far.

Gravity Rush.

I have been enjoying on and off Immortal Redneck.

Inscryption

Rain World is absolutely amazing. I'm hopelessly addicted to it. Highly recommend if you like unique games.

Final Fantasy XIII-2, modded with HD upscaled textures, community fixes, and Reshade. 2K Resolution w/ Improved AA + Color Correction + Motion Blur + Ray Tracing made this game look modern af 😎

And for the best game this year part, the developers really said "so FFXIII was linear? Well how about time is not linear!" Jumping back to old locations surprised me in that I actually wanted to go back to them and do optional content. And beneath the extra ass music (lol), is some of the most down right horrific/sad stuff shown in a FF game. Like the straight up Zombie apocalypse-like C'eith outbreak in the future that Serah even being near causes people to turn, she apologizes to them in battle as the turned enemies try to use remedy on theirselves to no avail. Being the last human alive and having to deal with seeing the last people alive dying off till it's just you on the planet. The cruel fate of some characters and the risks taken storywise and gamewise really surprised me.

Probably Manifold Garden. I just finished it last week and it was a consistently good experience. Highly recommended.

The King's Field Trilogy on PS1. These games bounced off me hard back in the day, but I got curious about them after reading about their influence on Souls. These were games that were waaaay ahead of their time, and so satisfying now that I have the patience to really appreciate what From Software were trying to create. Also: definitely play the translated version of the first Japanese one.

• Days Gone
• Dishonored 2
• Hitman Trilogy
• DOOM (2016)
• Prey (2017)

Xenoblade chronicles X. I finally got a beefy pc that can emulate it with all the graphical upgrades the Wii u can't even fathom, and this game is so much less of a slog now that I'm an adult with a finer appreciation for menus stacked in menus sacked in menus